The Boy Scouts youth protection timeline

In re­sponse to ques­tions from the Times about files per­tain­ing to al­leged child ab­use in the Boy Scouts between 1970 and 1991, the Boy Scouts of Amer­ica is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment and timeline:

“The Boy Scouts of Amer­ica be­lieves even a single in­stance of ab­use is un­ac­cept­able, and we re­gret there have been times when the BSA’s best ef­forts to pro­tect chil­dren were in­suf­fi­cient. For that we are very sorry and ex­tend our deep­est sym­path­ies to vic­tims. We are com­mit­ted to help­ing mem­bers of our Scout­ing fam­ily who have suffered ab­use and as­sist them through a vari­ety of means, in­clud­ing coun­sel­ing.

We main­tain our In­eligible Vo­lun­teer Files solely to help our or­gan­iz­a­tion re­move and keep out in­di­vidu­als deemed to be un­fit role mod­els. The files help us to pro­tect youth and are one com­pon­ent of our broad­er Youth Pro­tec­tion pro­gram. Scout­ing has long main­tained mul­tiple bar­ri­ers to ab­use, of which the IV files are part. The files alone have lim­it­a­tions and were only meant to serve as a bar­ri­er to keep out un­fit mem­bers as part of a com­pre­hens­ive ef­fort to keep kids safe.

In the more than 30 years since these re­leased files were cre­ated, we have con­tinu­ously en­hanced our multi-tiered policies and pro­ced­ures, which now in­clude back­ground checks, com­pre­hens­ive train­ing pro­grams, and safety policies. We have al­ways co­oper­ated fully with any re­quest from law en­force­ment and today re­quire our mem­bers to re­port even sus­pi­cion of ab­use dir­ectly to their loc­al au­thor­it­ies.

We are com­mit­ted to the on­go­ing en­hance­ment of our pro­gram, in line with evolving best prac­tices for pro­tect­ing youth.”